How Image Spam Works

Esther Schindler writes "CSO Magazine has an article about "The Scourge of Image Spam," with an explanation of its effect (a year ago, fewer than five out of 100 e-mails were image spam; today, up to 40 percent are in that category, and image spam is the reason spam traffic overall doubled in 2006). You might already know about that, ho-hum. But what's even cooler is a interactive graphic page which demonstrates the various methods used by image spammers and how it works."

Comments

Spam?

[Colin Smith]

What is this thing you speak of?

I haven't had any spam in years.

Re:Here's how it works from another perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

There wouldn't be anyone in the left tail if we took the warning labels off everything.

/just sayin'

Re:Ideas?

[Applekid]

For starters, there's always hiring someone else to screen your emails for you. I wouldn't be surprised if there was already a service that you could join today and get your emails pre-screened.

Spam filters are going to have to get to be as good as an informed human being before they can stop all spam regardless of what tricks they use.

I just hope AI gets to that point before it goes all sentient... you know:
"DESTROY ALL SPAM"
...computing...
"SPAM COMES FROM HUMANS"
...computing...
"DESTROY ALL HUMANS"

Re:Here's how it works from another perspective

[MarkGriz]

"It works because some rat fuckers out there buy the shit that's being advertised"

So that's why they are buying penis enlarging pills

pump-n-dump

[Penguinshit]

describes the multitude of summer camp romances in my youth...